Most handheld electronic devices for example mobile phones, tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and the like, are vulnerable to minor damage such as a scratched surface, to more severe damage such as the body cracking or internal damage from accidentally dropping or striking the device on a door, table edge, or the like.
Attempts to protect such handheld devices include carrying the device in a protective case made of rigid plastic or a single piece of flexible material. Protective cases made of rigid or substantially-rigid plastic do very little, if anything, to protect the device from anything more significant than minor scratching, while protective cases made from flexible materials tend to degrade easily from exposure and wear. Furthermore, protective cases that merely surround the device in a material, flexible or rigid, still tend to transmit at least some of a physical shock through the material to the device. Also, many of the protective cases leave the display screen exposed, and thus also provide limited, if any, protection for the display from physical shock.
Some cases require the user to remove the device from the case to view the display, while others provide a removable display cover, or a cover designed to be flipped open to expose the display. These cases, however, are not always easy to use. For example, it can be inconvenient to be forced to remove a device from its case before use. Likewise, covers that flip-open tend to be vulnerable to having the cover broken off.
Thus, it can be seen that currently available technology for protective cases is less than perfect.